


The Red Hot Brawling Sun

by Nokomis



Category: Stagger Lee (Folklore)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-22
Updated: 2013-12-22
Packaged: 2018-01-05 12:17:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,755
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1093785
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nokomis/pseuds/Nokomis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Every night, Staggolee comes into the Bucket of Blood looking for trouble.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Red Hot Brawling Sun

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Luna](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Luna/gifts).



> I’ve tried to incorporate references to several different versions of Stagger Lee in this -- Lloyd Price, Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, Pacific Gas & Electric (this version is where the title is from), Mississippi John Hurt, etc …. I really wanted to address the way that the story has evolved from a (likely) real event into the realm of myth. I really hope you enjoy this.

It’s a bar in the mists, an old roadhouse just beyond the crossroads. 

Maybe they were real people once. Maybe Staggolee was a man, maybe he felt things like guilt or remorse or even love. Maybe Billy Lyons was more than just a fool who thought he could beat the devil at his own game.

Maybe.

The roadhouse is small… rickety tables and mismatched chairs. Wooden stools and a few chairs with peeling, cracked leather seats that all the patrons, out of a combined sense of respect, leave for the oldest amongst them. They serve swill and rotgut and the fine moonshine that’s imported all the way from the Appalachians, poured straight out of old jugs that still have red clay dirt smeared on the bottom like old bloodstains. 

There seem to be more corners than there ought to be, filled with faces that you almost recognize, that make you want to go up and ask, “Don’t I know you from somewhere?” but you never do.

If they wanted to be recognized, they would be.

So you ignore the railspike and hammer lying carelessly next the broad-shouldered man whose chair threatens to break under his massive musculature, and the haunting strains of the blues coming from the guitar of a man with hellfire in his eyes.

When the door slams open and Staggolee strolls in, Stetson pushed down low on his forehead and his hand brushing the six-shooter on his hip, no one turns to look.

No one but Billy Lyons.

*

Tonight, the hat is freshly brushed and spotless. 

It could be that first night again, the one that launched Stag and Billy into this endless cycle. It’s been so long since that night that Billy can no longer remember if they were friends or strangers or just drinking buddies, but he lifts a hand in greeting anyway.

There’s too much history between them now to ignore.

Stag takes his time getting to Billy’s table. He stops at the bar, comes away with a bottle of devil’s water. The bartender doesn’t meet Stag’s eyes; instead his gaze tracks over Stag’s head like he’s just trying to make it through the next few moments without teetering off the high wire. 

Billy’s watching with an odd sense of camaraderie that comes from having looked down the same barrel; he’s trying to get a read on where Stag is tonight. He can’t, which unnerves him more than seeing Stag in his bloodiest mood.

Stag tips his hat at the prostitute who hitches her skirt up high above her knee as he passes, but doesn’t offer her a drink. He keeps heading towards Billy’s table.

Billy shuffles his deck of cards as he watches the prostitute let her skirt fall back down over her leg, not looking entirely disappointed that Stag didn’t take her up on her offer. Stag sets his bottle down on Billy’s table and says, “Deal me in.”

Billy runs the cards through his hands one last time – they’re so worn they slide into each other softly, and he misses the crisp sound they once made – and calls a few men over. Stag sloshes some of his shine into Billy’s empty glass while the chairs are shuffling around, and Billy lifts his glass up to Stag in a silent toast. The moonshine is clear as water and burns like hell going down, but Billy takes it all down in one tilt of his head.

Stag tilts the bottle back at Billy as he ignores the two men who sit on either side of him. The game has been played so many times before, and Billy watches Stag carefully. He’s neutral tonight – none of the anger twisting his features like on the nights that he paints the walls red, but there’s no warmth to his gestures, either.

“Ready?” Billy asks. He sets the cards in the middle of the table, and Stag cuts the deck deftly. He picks up more than he leaves, just like always.

Billy deals out the first hand, and Lady Luck favors him. He ends up with a small pile of crumpled bills and coins in front of him, and Stag takes a long, hard drink, hand hovering near his belt.

The Colt’s handle is pale and carved with a six-point buck’s head, though the image is as soft as the edges of Billy’s deck of cards, and for the same reason: overuse. The gun was old even back when Billy was young, and he’s never been able to suss out where a man like Stagger Lee got a hold of such a thing.

The Stetson and the Colt belong in the untamed lands far west of the Mississippi, not here in a rundown roadhouse along the muddy lady’s shores. 

Stag’s thumb runs along the points of the buck’s antlers, like he’s counting off how many bits of lead are inside.

There’s fire in Billy’s belly as he stacks his winnings up, and he ups the ante for the next hand.

The other two men fade away from the table, almost like they were never there to begin with. This has always been about Staggolee and Billy Lyons. Stag’s eyes gleam with the devil’s own ire as his money dwindles away, but Billy’s got luck on his side.

Luck and the cold, sure knowledge that fate’s gonna have her way with him, no matter what he does. Billy’s calmer and surer than he has any right to be, given his past, but once a man’s freed from fear of death… Once he’s embraced the inevitability of it…

Billy figures he might as well have some fun along the way.

And it’s fun as hell to watch Stag’s money pile up in front of Billy until there’s only a few cents left in front of him, and Billy offers, “I’d take that hat of yours as a bet.”

Stag’s staring hard at the cards he was dealt, and he reaches up slowly and puts the hat down in the center of the table. It’s never quite the same hat – tonight it’s got a thin braided leather band around it, and some nights it’s cowhide, and some nights it’s gator skin. Billy’s never too fussed about the particulars, just knows that the hat isn’t worth a man’s life to anyone but Staggolee.

The cards fly from his fingertips, sliding along the knife-scarred table, falling where they may.

He knows the hat is his as soon as he sees his cards, as soon as he sees three queens watching him through disinterested eyes. Stag’s gettin’ mad dog mean, lip snarling up to show tobacco-yellow teeth. Luck never grants him any favors; when Billy’s feeling righteous, he takes that as a sign.

“You cheatin’ son of a bitch,” is Stag’s reaction when Billy lays down his ladies. Billy smiles back, switchblade sharp, and sets the Stetson on his head.

It’s a bit snug – Stag might be a mean bastard, but he’s never been the biggest man in the room. He’s never needed to be, not with that twitchy finger of his. Billy just tilts it back on his head.

The roadhouse goes quiet. Billy can feel eyes on him, knows that everyone in the room knows what’s about to happen to him.

It doesn’t feel real, the knowledge that his belly will soon ache and burn as his blood splashes on the rough-hewn floor.

All that feels real is the rage on Stag’s face as Billy says, “Not much of a hat. Why, I tried on one once down in N’awlins that felt like God himself had set aside a day to make it….”

Stag’s chair makes a loud scraping noise as he pushes back from the table. His cards drift to the floor. Billy catches sight of a deuce and not much else.

The hat lays heavy as a crown on his head as Billy rises to his feet, matching Stag’s movements.

Stag’s thumb caresses the buck’s six points, and Billy wonders which one will send him to the pearly gates.

He thinks of his woman, then. Delia, beauty worn thin and tired from the life he gave her, and wonders where she is now. If she ever found a way out of the mess he left her in.

It’s the third one, this time. 

Stagger Lee’s boot heel leaves a perfect imprint in the thick puddle of blood as he coolly walks away.

*

Sometimes, it’s the rattle of a die cast that sends Billy to his maker. Some nights, it’s the shine, the gin, the fiery burn of overconfidence.

Some nights it’s a woman, others, a man. Words do the deed just as well, and sometimes…

Sometimes it’s nothing but the twitch of a frustrated finger belonging to a bad, mean man.

*

The moon light is cutting in through the dirt-crusted windows of the Bucket of Blood when Staggolee comes strolling in. Billy's shuffling a deck of cards at his favorite table, feeling the crisp new edges of the cards cutting into his palms satisfyingly. There's a empty chair beside him, but Staggolee ignores it in favor of sitting at the bar, tipping his dusty Stetson at sweet Nellie. She hitches her skirt up well above her knee as she perches on the barstool beside him, her low heel propped on its highest rung.

Billy deals his cards out to familiar faces while the soft, plaintive sounds of the blues fills the air. Stag’s back is to him, but Billy isn’t much bothered.

Stag won’t be able to resist the lure of the game forever, and Billy’s got the devil’s own luck. 

*

“I’m feelin’ mistreated today,” Stag tells Billy when he sits down. “Just as a word of warning, you see.”

“Lordie, I’m mistreated most days.” Billy sets the dice down in the center of the table, snake eyes gleaming upward. “That’s never stopped me from livin’.”

Stag laughs, a sound like rusty nails against iron, and he gathers up the dice in one lean, scarred hand. “And it doesn’t stop me from wantin’ to see most any man die.”

Tonight the gun’s got a plain, worn wooden handle with a pitchfork carved crudely into the side.

Billy Lyons never backs down, not even when he knows the visceral truth of that statement. He pulls the same crumpled bill out of his pocket that he bet first all those long, bloody nights ago. Lee might have been a friend once, but Stag…. Stag’s turned into something else entirely.

Stop fighting the devil, and he wins.


End file.
